The Observer view on the woeful state of the UK’s water industry
If the UK is to survive the worst impacts of climate change, it will need robust infrastructure to protect its citizens from the meteorological threats that lie ahead. By every scientific estimate, our hothouse future is going to be one of increasingly unpleasant extremes: more intense heatwaves, rising summer temperatures, more violent storms, rising sea levels – and, of course, worsening droughts. These impacts are baked into the future, scientists have repeatedly warned us. Thanks to the huge amounts of greenhouse gases we have already pumped into the atmosphere, we have no way of avoiding these changes. We can only try to cope with them.
Our response to the current severe water shortages therefore gives us a chance to assess how well we are preparing for the meteorological mayhem ahead. In short, can we gain some confidence about our ability to fight climate change from the way our water companies are attempting to battle the drought that is now afflicting the country? The answer is straightforward and depressing. If the water industry is anything to go by, we look woefully unfit for the coming battle.
Certainly, the images of parched grasslands and empty reservoirs that have filled our TV screens and newspapers for the past week indicate that we have learned very little about the business of maintaining a proper national water supply. No substantial reservoir has been constructed in England since the Kielder Water dam was built in 1981. Thus, our capacity to store fresh water has remained static as demand for it has risen steadily with the growth of the population.
This inability to match water storage to the needs of the population has had grim knock-on effects. First, it has forced us to pump ever more water from
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